Answer: Giovanni reflects on her childhood in her grandparents' home city of Knoxville, Tennessee in the late '50s. She remembers their habits, including a lack of television during the day and cozy nights spent listening to jazz greats singing on the radio. She centers her happy memories of childhood on the Lawson McGhee Library in Knoxville and its kindly librarian, Mrs. Long. Giovanni tells us that people like Mrs. Long and her grandmother made her world in Knoxville, Tennessee a happy and safe place, despite the social inequalities that made the South a generally inhospitable place for black families. She ends the poem by saying that this love opened up the world in a positive way for her, preparing her for all the changes that were to happen in her life and in American society.
